Of Androids and Electric Sheep
by exclamation
Summary: Crossover between Power Rangers Operation Overdrive and Child of the Hive. Mack and Sophie trade stories. Set towards the end of OO and after the end of CotH. Contains spoilers for CotH.


Mack looked around, surprised and impressed by what he saw. He appeared to be standing in a pleasant patch of woodland on a warm day. The branches overhead waved gently in the breeze. Between the leaves, he saw a blue sky patched with lacy white. All around him, plants thrived. He could hear the faint chirps of birdsong above the rustle of leaves.

It was hard to believe that he was lying on a table in the command centre with wires hooked up to his head.

He walked to the nearest tree, placing a hand on the rough branch. It even felt real.

"I'm impressed."

The voice echoed his thoughts, but it wasn't his voice. Mack turned to see a young woman standing among the trees. She was slender and pretty, a light cotton frock moving slightly in the breeze. She smiled at Mack, a curious but friendly greeting.

"Even I wasn't able to design an interface that enabled two way interaction between this environment and a physical mind. How did you do it?"

"I didn't. I'm not really a person. I'm an android."

The young woman or, more accurately, the image of the young woman smiled again.

"Do you dream of electric sheep?"

"Huh?"

"It's a reference to a book," she said.

"A book?"

"Yes. A book. Words, paper, sentences. You do read, don't you?"

There was something faintly superior in her tone as she asked that and Mack bristled with anger.

"I happen to read quite a lot actually." She raised an enquiring eyebrow, so he went on. "I've read the entire Baron's series, pretty much every Ian Flemming book, The Adventures of Captain Black Beard-"

"Historically inaccurate," the woman interrupted, "but with a fairly cohesive plotline."

"You've read it?"

She shrugged, "I've read a lot of things."

"But you're a computer program."

"So it would seem are you."

Mack couldn't really argue with that point.

"Besides," she went on, "I wasn't always a machine. I'm a simulated representation of an organic mind. I was human once."

The woman, whose name was apparently Sophie, led Mack away from the woodland. The trees parted and Mack looked down on a quaint village of white buildings. It lay in a lush valley, dotted with flowers and crossed with burbling streams. Everything shone in fantastic colours beneath the perfect sky. Between the houses, people moved about their lives, smiling and happy. No pollution. No hate. No crimes. No monsters committing senseless violence on a quest for jewels and power.

"It isn't real," Mack said.

"It's as real as anything out there," Sophie said. "Just because we're machines, it doesn't mean we don't live and think and feel."

There were so many questions Mack wanted to ask. He wanted to know who Sophie was and who she'd been, how she'd come to be here. He wanted to know about the people he now saw; had they once been human too? He wanted to know if they were happy as machines or if they lacked something; if they, like he, felt jealousy towards those humans with their true, organic lives.

But the world vanished, replaced in a fraction of a second with the ceiling of the command centre and dad leaning over him. Mr Hartford, Mack corrected himself. Androids didn't have dads.

"Mack?" Mr Hartford asked. "Mack, are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Mack sat up, looking round at the other Rangers, who stared at him, worried expressions on each of their faces. "Why did you disconnect me?"

"Your neural activity increased enormously," Mr Hartford said. "We were worried there might be an overload."

"I was fine. There's a simulated environment in there, with people. I was talking to this girl."

"But you were only connected two seconds," Dax said. "Even Will doesn't move that fast."

"Hey!"

"I was there at least ten minutes," Mack said.

"Maybe that explains the increase in brain activity," Rose said. "The machine must be running at a faster processing time and Mack's internal clock had to speed up to match."

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That evening, after Mr Hartford had refused to hook Mack up again without more tests, Mack made his way to the library. He browsed the titles of the numerous books. Most of them were old works that had been there for generations, but Mack and his dad had added to the collection. Mack suspected that the one he wanted would be recent.

He wished Sophie had been clearer, but he knew the book when he saw it. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Mack picked the book from the shelves and settled down to read.

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"Rose, could you make an ebook file compatible with that machine?"

Rose looked up from the quantum physics text she was reading.

"Probably," she answered. "Why?"

"I'd like to give Sophie a gift."

"You do realise that Sophie is merely part of the coding of the simulated environment."

"Do you think I'm merely coding?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Then please make the present."

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Mack stood in the woods, exactly where he'd arrived the first time. This time, he began walking towards the village on his own. He wasn't surprised when Sophie walked towards him. The day seemed identically idyllic, but Sophie was now in jeans and t-shirt.

Mack held out the book.

Rose had done an exceptional job. The ebook was represented in this world as a perfect copy of the physical book Mack had in his room. It was the first of the Baron's series, complete with rapid plot, over the top bad guys and daring escapades.

Sophie took it and laughed.

"Thank you. It's been a while since I've had anything new to read. There wasn't time to pack a library when we came."

"I've been reading that android's book."

"What do you think?"

"It's scarily close to home in places. My dad implanted me with false memories so I thought I was a kid who'd grown up and gone on fishing trips and broken my arm."

"A fake childhood beats my real one," Sophie said.

"Do you-" Mack broke off, not sure how to finish. "Do you feel like a person?"

"Yes. I don't feel any less alive than I did when I was flesh and blood." She gave another laugh, a merry little sound that fit with the trees and the sunlight. "Alan Turing believed machines could think like people. I'm not going to argue with a genius like that."

Sophie hugged him, catching him completely off guard.

"I believe you're a real boy, Pinocchio."


End file.
